David Simpson - Post-Human Trilogy

As he traveled up the west coast of North America from his home in San Francisco, past Oregon and Washington State, right through Seattle, he wondered what those variables were. He hadn’t seen a soul. His huge family was gone. He was a great-grandfather, the patriarch of a family with nearly one hundred members, but they were all gone. He’d checked on them all. Some of them were erased completely, no sign of them. Others were just red stains on carpets or couches, impossible to identify, the sickening smell of blood permeating everything. He was a patriarch no more .

During his training days, Rich developed a wicked sense of humor. It was a coping mechanism. Being funny made it easier to deal with stress. If you always focus on making people laugh, you’re less focused on your own fears—on your deficiencies. It also put other people at ease. If they felt less threatened by you, by the clown, they wouldn’t look as hard for your faults. Rich felt riddled with faults. He was Swiss cheese.

All those faults were coming to the surface now. He could barely keep his eyes open as he headed north past Seattle. He would be in Vancouver soon, a city he’d seldom visited before today. He didn’t know the city well; all he had was his atlas. Thank God my city shares a coast with Vancouver, he thought. He would have been hopelessly lost if he’d had to travel a more complicated route. He was totally dependent on the automation of daily life and he knew it. And now he was left to his own devices. Completely free. Terrifying.

Rich was relieved when Vancouver appeared in the distance. Soon the rest of the group would return, and he wouldn’t be alone anymore. It was too quiet. Disconnected from the Net, disconnected from millions of voices, it was like being dead. Was he dead?

It wasn’t as easy to find Commander Keats’s house as one might have thought. Rich had noticed that James often believed the people around him were as perceptive as he. Most of the team members had never been to James’s house, yet he expected them all to know the way back. How? Was Rich supposed to notice something about the Commander’s street that made it different from the thousands of other city streets? The house looked like all the rest of the houses—metallic, an igloo shaped bunker with some grass out front and a few big trees in the backyard. Not much to go on. Was Rich supposed to know the types of flowers in the front garden? James would probably notice that type of detail. He’d know all the Latin names. Having a photographic memory must be wonderful. But what about everyone else? Rich, like almost everyone else before today, had a 149 IQ—he was brilliant. But not that brilliant. Not brilliant enough to think his way through this. Not brilliant enough to stand over the remains of his whole family, his children, his grandchildren, his great-grandchildren, and comprehend it all.

And now he had to find that one goddamned house. One house! And I can’t even do that! He stopped in a neighborhood that looked exactly like the fifty neighborhoods he’d just been in and sat on a tree stump. He disengaged his magnetic field and took off his helmet and gloves and struck a pose reminiscent of Rodin’s Thinker . It was sunny outside now, and the subdivision he was in was built on the side of a mountain. He was looking over water that sparkled like he’d never seen water sparkle before. He’d thought San Francisco was the most beautiful city in the world, but he had to admit now that it couldn’t hold a candle to Vancouver in July. Why hadn’t he come here before? He thought that maybe if his family were still alive, he might have brought them up for a vacation. The camping must be amazing.

They’re all gone.

Suddenly, the silence was replaced by something else. A hum —electrical—not far away. He turned to his left and saw the source: a street-cleaner. But it wasn’t cleaning the street. He’d never seen a street-cleaner that wasn’t cleaning a street before. It seemed to be coming toward him.

Alarmed, Rich stood quickly. “What the hell?”

The street cleaner stopped. What was it doing?

Suddenly, another hum . This time it was to his right. The same thing. A street cleaner coming toward him. He’d never noticed how ugly they were before. They must have weighed a couple of hundred kilograms with all of the equipment they had to carry—all of the cleaning fluid they needed to transport. They were modern—functional. The A.I. had designed them. Aesthetic appeal was apparently not one of the parameters in their design. They looked like robotic hunchbacks. A large head was always close to the pavement, held by a skinny, giraffe-like neck—always, except for now that is. Now, the neck held the head and its glowing red eye two meters into the air, craning it toward Rich.

“What do you want?” Rich took a defensive stance and the second robot stopped as well. They didn’t leave. They stood to either side of him while their electric hum sent chills throughout Rich’s body. Never had a robot approached him. It was unwholesome. Suddenly they were alive. No longer invisible machines. “Are you watching me?” Rich asked.

A third hum joined the fray. Another street cleaner began to approach from behind the first robot.

“It’s starting to get a bit crowded in here, don’t you think, fellas?”

Then salvation came. Two green balls of light cruised overhead.

“Oh thank God!” Rich put his helmet back on and lifted off into the air. “I’ll be seeing you guys around, okay? Say hi to everyone else in Freaky Robot Town for me, will ya?”

He ignited his magnetic field and blazed through the sky in pursuit of his two companions.

James and Thel set down in his front yard in the late afternoon sun. Old-timer was already there, looking pale and extraordinarily grim but relieved to see the safe return of his friends.

“Where’s Rich?” James asked him, concern in his voice. “He should have been the first one back.”

“He’s right behind you,” Old-timer responded.

At that very moment, Rich was disengaging his magnetic field and pulling off his helmet. “Had a bit of trouble finding the place.”

“I’m just glad you’re okay,” James replied, putting his hand on Rich’s shoulder.

“Screw that! I’m not okay!” Rich exclaimed, his lip quivering as he felt himself coming apart at the seams, his anxiety overwhelming him. “I’m not even close to okay! Everybody’s dead! Everybody’s dead!”

Thel pulled Rich close and let him sob on her shoulder. “We know, Rich. We know. Everyone’s gone.”

James watched as Rich expressed the emotion that the rest of the team was trying to quell. How could this happen? He turned to Old-timer, who sat on the lawn and looked off into the distance, thousands of miles away. He knew he didn’t have to ask, but he did so anyway. “All gone?”

Old-timer pulled himself out of his trance just long enough to look up at James, with a face empty of the characteristic joy that James had always found there. “Yes.”

“There’s something else,” Rich began, pulling himself away from Thel, “Street-cleaners. They just surrounded me…a couple of blocks from here!”

Rich’s words momentarily stunned the others. Old-timer and James shared looks of surprise.

“What do you mean?” Old-timer asked.

“I was resting a few blocks from here, and street-cleaners—three of them, came up to me, one by one, and just…watched me.”

“What the hell…” Thel began but let her words drift away in the breeze as she saw another street-cleaner suddenly appear at the end of the street.

It floated slowly toward them and set down only a few meters away from James’s house, small legs unfolding from the underbelly of the mechanical monster. It was only the first robot to appear as, slowly, the last humans on Earth were surrounded. One by one, nearly a dozen street-cleaners appeared and took their places in a semicircle, facing James and the others.